


In Snow and Silence

by falsechaos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, it's a christmas fic i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsechaos/pseuds/falsechaos
Summary: Holidays can be a time of reflection and remembrance.That doesn't mean they have to spent alone.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	In Snow and Silence

_InsertNicknameHere_ : wheres keef

_SpaceDaddy_ : He’s out today, Lance.

_InsertNicknameHere_ : hence wheres keef  
 _InsertNicknameHere_ : need to show off my holiday swag! :D

_SpaceDaddy_ : Not a good day.

_InsertNicknameHere_ : never is w/ him  
 _InsertNicknameHere_ : srsly  
 _InsertNicknameHere_ : wheres the keef?

_SpaceDaddy_ : Lance...

_InsertNicknameHere_ : wow never knew dotdotdot could be so scary

_SpaceDaddy_ : Here’s the address.  
 _SpaceDaddy_ : [attachment]

_InsertNicknameHere_ : wait whut

_SpaceDaddy_ : Yeah. That’s why today isn’t a good day.

⁂

_InsertNicknameHere_ : im coming over

_KnifeKnifeBaby_ : not home

_InsertNicknameHere_ : so? i know where u are

_KnifeKnifeBaby_ : no

_InsertNicknameHere_ : shit way to spend the holiday, dude

_KnifeKnifeBaby_ : fuck off

_InsertNicknameHere_ : maybe later ;)

_KnifeKnifeBaby_ : no  
 _KnifeKnifeBaby_ : please

⁂

It’s the ‘please’ that pushes Lance over the edge and out of his cautious apathy. He can picture the way it sits on Keith’s face as he types (always pecking with a single finger, use your thumbs, you animal!), soft and hesitant and lost. It’s the ‘please’ that has Lance shrugging on a heavy coat and wrestling a box down from the attic. And it’s the ‘please’ that has him sitting in his car, shivering, parked in front of Bear Creek Memorial Garden.

Garden.

Bullshit name for a cemetery.

Just call it what it is.

A place where you leave dead people.

(He deliberately pushes away memories of the sharp contrast between his abuela’s warm hands and the cold gleam of her picture frame on the mantel.)

Lance glares at the box shoved in the otherwise empty seat next to him. Can’t be any sort of good outcome from this, he knows. Either a punch to the face, yelling, shoving. Or silence, cold and broken. He doesn’t know which will be worse. He settles for silence. Silence would be worse.

A punch to the face at least gives him something to work with.

He huffs and grabs the box and kicks the car door open. Snow crunches under his boots. It’s just a couple inches and already glazed back over from the noon melt. To Lance’s tender, beach loving tendencies, it might as well be three feet thick and cemented to a glacier. He passes through the gates and instinctively tries to make his boots sound more polite.

Paths lead to a couple of the graves, footsteps made days ago and softened by the warming and refreezing of the snow, and dusted with an undisturbed scattering of browned pine needles. Withered roses decorate a few of the headstones.

Lance finds Keith deeper in. Learns his father’s name is Travis Kogane, beloved father, honored hero, died in the line of duty. There’s a lot left unsaid in the dash between his date of birth and date of death.

“Hey, man.”

Keith twitches. The cheap fabric of his garish wind breaker jacket creaks in the silence. It looks like something grabbed hastily from the back of the closet, like something unearthed. Lance can’t see Keith’s hands, which means Keith is doing that arm clutch self-hug thing again.

Lance steps forward, shifts the weight of the box to his hip, and puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

“Go away.” Keith’s words are soft and lost and settle neatly into the cracks of Lance’s breaking heart. He doesn’t even bother to shrug off Lance’s hand, just lets the weight of it slip off his shoulder.

“Nope,” Lance says cheerfully, popping the final consonant. He steps around Keith and drops the box to the ground, yanking up the flaps and digging through it. Lance shoves a cheap, glittering garland in Keith’s face before he can react. “Here, take this.” Lance has learned, through painful trial and error, that sometimes the best way to steer Keith Kogane is simply to confuse and overwhelm him.

Keith gawps at the garland in his hands and then Lance. “What.”

“No, don’t need it yet, just hold it.”

Lance works quickly and yanks out a short, stunted Christmas tree. Barely over a foot and a half tall even straightened out, with a wobbling crisscross of plastic for a base. It’s branches are short and nearly doubled over in places so it could fit in the box and bits of over bright plastic needles drift to the muddy snow on the grave. He jams it just to the left of the headstone.

“Lance, what the fuck?”

Lance glances up, tries to twitch his lips in something resembling a reassuring smile. Feels it twist into a confused grimace.

This is the bad sort of red Keith. Hot crimson in the apples of his cheeks, flash of white teeth with too sharp canines, lips drawn back and tight. There’s nothing of the soft flush on the tips of his ears that Lance has come to covet, nothing of the hesitant smile that Lance has come to swear is just for him.

Keith lets the garland drop twinkling and gold on his scuffed sneakers. “What the actual fuck is going on? Why are you here? Who told you I was here?” His hands are tight and furled, knuckles stark against his skin.

Lance back peddles, hands already up in defense. “Hey, now, you know I don’t squeal on my sources!” He bumps against the headstone.

“Who told you!?” Keith’s shout is almost tight enough to be a scream.

“Shiro.”

“Shi--” Keith staggers a step back and presses a palm to his forehead. “Shiro. Sure, fine, why not. I thought he’d-- Shit, he can’t even-- Can’t even keep a single stupid promise to leave me alone today!”

“He’s not the one who came.”

Keith stomps forward again, stabs a finger into Lance’s chest. “No, but he told you! I told him I wanted to be alone for this!”

Lance wraps his hand around Keith’s wrist, but doesn’t move to push him away. No. Lance tightens his grip and pulls Keith forward, yanks until Keith comes crashing into his chest. “He didn’t break his promise,” Lance murmured into the shivering crook of Keith’s neck. “He knew you shouldn’t be alone for this. Not again. Not ever again, I swear.”

Keith’s arms hang limp at his sides. “He promised.” Words soft and lost again. “He promised he come back.” Years and years gone in that simple phrase, the voice of a small child staring into the smoldering embers of what was once his home.

“I know.” Lance wraps his arms around Keith, traps him against the warmth of his chest and tries to shield him from the bitter cold inside and out. “No promises,” he whispers into Keith’s ear. “I’ll be here. Or Shiro. Or any of the others. But no promises. Just... steady as the snow, yeah?”

Keith doesn’t speak, doesn’t reach up to return Lance’s protective embrace. Just gives a short, stuttering up and down of his head that might be a nod.

It’s silence.

But it’s a start.


End file.
